Ricoh Caplio R6 Review

Introduction

The Ricoh Caplio R6 was announced at the start of March, just 6 months after
its predecessor, the R5. New features
on the Ricoh R6 include a
Face Recognition mode, following the trend set by most
new 2007 cameras, larger 2.7 inch LCD screen, redesigned
user
interface, slimmer body, file recovery option and 54Mb internal
memory. The Ricoh R6 retains the same massive
7x
optical
zoom lens,
which
is
equivalent
to 28-200mm on a 35mm camera. Most cameras of this size offer
a 3x or at best a 4x optical zoom, but Ricoh have squeezed
a 7x zoom wide-angle lens into a body that is only 23.3mm thick
at its widest point. To help compensate for the effects of
handshake, Ricoh have included a Vibration Correction system
that should
ensure
sharper
photos at slower shutter speeds than normal. Other highlights
of the Ricoh Caplio R6 include a 1cm macro mode and the usual fast responsiveness that you
always get from a Ricoh camera. So is the Ricoh Caplio R6 worth
considering if you're looking for a point and shoot digicam,
and is it any better than the 6-month old R5? Carry on reading
to find out.

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Ease of Use

The Ricoh Caplio R6 is a very compact digital camera that
easily fits in the palm of your hand, measuring 99.6(W) x
55.0 (H) x 23.3mm (D) and weighing around 135g.
This is one camera that you truly won't notice carrying in
a trouser/shirt pocket or a handbag. It has an under-stated
appearance that is fairly attractive, but which isn't going
to really wow anyone either. A sticker on front of my
review sample proudly proclaims that the Ricoh Caplio R6
has
a 28-200mm zoom range, a truly amazing feat of engineering
in such a small camera. When the lens is fully extended,
the
camera measures over 7cm in depth, but thankfully it retracts
fully back into the body when it is turned off.

Ricoh have changed the body design of the R6 in comparison with the previous
R5 model, which had a gradual
15 degree
bend
in the
camera
body
on the right
hand
side
(looking
from
the
back), making the corner of the small flash unit
protrude a lot from the front of the camera. There
is still a bend on the R6, but it's much less pronounced,
and the flash unit only slightly protrudes. Instead of the
crazy bend, the defining design aspect of the Ricoh R6 is
the metal band which runs around the camera. On the right
hand
side, it extends about 0.5cms past the main body of the camera,
and the AV/Out and USB ports and camera strap eyelet are
located here. Ricoh refer to it as a "distinctive strap attachment", but it's a strange design
that doesn't really add anything to the camera.

A more welcome change is the new zoom lever, which now sits on top of the camera
around the shutter button. The Ricoh R6 now uses a lever
that you push left to zoom out, and pull right to zoom in,
which I found much easier to use than the up/down rocker
switch on the back of the R5 model. The Scene mode switch
has also been moved, now located above the LCD screen. The
Ricoh Caplio R6 is a point and shoot camera with no advanced
exposure controls, so it's
not particularly complex in terms of its design. There are
10 external controls in total, leaving plenty of room for
the large 2.7 inch LCD screen that dominates the back of
the camera. The R6 follows the design of previous Ricoh cameras
by having a vertical row of buttons on the rear, to the right
of the LCD, along with the navigation
pad and thumb grip.

Rear Controls

Top Controls

One of these vertical buttons is the Adj. button, a particularly nice feature
that allows you to quickly adjust 3 different settings that
are commonly used. Press it to alter Exposure Compensation,
White Balance and ISO Speed. Even better, the Adj. menu is
customisable - you can add another setting to it and also
choose what all four settings do, allowing you to control
exactly what you want quick access to. Continuing the customisation
theme, you can now configure the camera and save the current
settings as one of two My Settings modes, which are accessible
by setting the Scene switch to the MY option. This allows
you to configure the R6 for different uses and allows quick
access to each configuration (the camera remembers the settings when it's turned off).

There is an innovative feature on
the Ricoh Caplio R6 that aims to make life easier for you.
This camera has an anti-shake system, now
called Camera Shake Correction - turn it on and the Ricoh
Caplio R6 automatically compensates
for camera shake, which is a slight
blurring of the image that typically occurs at slow shutter
speeds. You don't notice that the camera is actually doing
anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that
you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take
sharp photos. Ricoh seem to have realised the importance
of this system, as it is turned on by default. Thankfully
leaving the anti-shake system on didn't negatively affect
the battery-life, with
the camera managing over 325 shots before the battery needed
to be recharged.

If you have never used a digital camera
before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading
the comprehensive and easy-to-follow manual before you start
is a must. Thankfully Ricoh have chosen to supply it in printed
format, rather than as a PDF on a CD, so you can also carry
it with you. The large 2.7 inch LCD screen is the only way
of framing your shots, so if you have to have an optical
viewfinder, look elsewhere now. Ricoh have maintained
the resolution of the LCD screen on the R6, which still has
230,000 pixels. The various
icons used to represent the camera settings are clear and
legible, although I was slightly annoyed by the LCD brightness
message along the bottom of the screen, which is displayed whenever you
press the Display button.

The main menu system on the Ricoh Caplio R6 is straight-forward to use and is
accessed by pressing the Menu button in the middle of the
navigation pad. There are two main menus, Shooting Settings
and Setup. Quite a lot of the camera's main options, such
as image size, sharpness, metering mode and continuous mode,
are accessed here, so the Shooting Settings menu has 18 options
spread over 4 screens. Due to the large LCD screen and restricting
the number of on-screen choices to 5, the various options
and icons are very clear and legible.

Memory
Card Slot

Battery
Compartment

The new face recognition feature offered by the Ricoh R6 didn't make a great
deal of difference if I'm being honest, as there's the tendency
of
the user
to pre-focus on the subject – and obviously a face if taking
a portrait – before fully pressing the shutter button anyway.
Ricoh have also chosen to make it a specific scene mode,
rather than a general setting that applies to whichever shooting
mode is currently selected, which rather
limits its usefulness. Face recognition does work
if the subjects are looking directly at the camera, but the
R6 takes a while to lock onto the subject, and I think that
the tried and trusted method of half-pressing the shutter
button
to
focus
and then
recomposing
the shot
is a quicker and more reliable method.

Ricoh are well known for delivering
responsive cameras, and the Caplio R6 continues that tradition.
The start-up time from turning the Ricoh
Caplio R6 on to being
ready to
take a photo is very quick at around 0.5 second, and it only
takes just over 1 second to zoom from the widest focal length
to the longest, impressive given the focal range. Focusing
is very quick in good light and the camera happily achieves
focus most of the time indoors or in low-light situations.
Note that the camera does struggle to lock onto the subject
sometimes at the tele-photo end of the lens. The visibility
and refresh rate of the 2.7 inch LCD screen are very good.
It takes about 0.5 second to store a JPEG image, allowing
you to keep shooting as they are being recorded onto the memory card - there is no LCD blackout between each
image. In the fastest Continuous mode the camera takes 2.5
frames per second for an unlimited number of images at the
highest JPEG image quality, which is excellent for this class
of camera. Overall the Ricoh Caplio
R6 is extremely quick in terms of operational speed.

Once you have captured a photo, the Ricoh Caplio R6 has an average range of options
when it comes to playing, reviewing and managing your images.
You can instantly scroll through the images that you have
taken, view thumbnails, zoom in and out up to 16x magnification,
view slideshows with audio, set the print order, delete,
protect and resize an image. There's also a new Recover File
option which will rescue deleted images, just so long as
you don't turn the camera off first. The Display button toggles
detailed settings information about
each picture
on and off,
such
as the ISO rating and aperture / shutter speed, and there
is a small histogram available during both shooting and playback.
A new White Saturation display mode during image playback
indicates over-exposed highlights by flashing those areas
on and off. When taking a photo, pressing the Display
button toggles between
the
detailed
information,
the histogram
and
gridlines
to aid composition.

In summary the Ricoh Caplio R6 is
an intuitive, unassuming, very responsive point and shoot
compact camera with the obvious attraction of the 7x zoom
lens.

PhotographyBLOG
is a member of the DIWA
organisation. Our test results for the Ricoh Caplio R6 have been submitted to DIWA
for comparison with test results for different samples of
the same camera model supplied by other DIWA
member sites.

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